Conflict Intensity Quotes

I think the scale of the conflict [in Afghanistan] has dramatically changed in 2003. You're now facing a much more motivated, well-supported enemy. I don't see any quick end to this thing.

The stakes in conflict do not change. Battle determines who will control the wealth or its equivalent.

If all properly economic problems were solved once for all . . . the social struggle and strife would . . . [not necessarily] be reduced in amount or intensity . . . in the absence of some moral revolution which could by no means be assumed to follow in consequence of this change itself.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

We have begun to slam doors, and to throw things. I throw my purse, an ashtray, a package of chocolate chips, which breaks on impact. We are picking up chocolate chips for days. Jon throws a glass of milk, the milk, not the glass: he knows his own strength, as I do not. He throws a box of Cheerios, unopened. The things I throw miss, although they are worse things. The things he throws hit, but are harmless. I begin to see how the line is crossed, between histrionics and murder.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

I believe that in intense conflict, far from becoming sharper, differences melt away.

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

Next to the confrontation between two highly honed batteries of lawyers, jungle warfare is a stately minuet.

The resolution of the combat is seldom equal to the vehemence of the charge.

The more conflict and contrast you have with a character makes it more interesting.

The best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed by those that feel their sharpness.

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love

The fundamentals for me are character and conflict. I put character first because readers will be indifferent to conflict if they are indifferent to the character who is experiencing it.

What I call a mimetic crisis is a situation of conflict so intense that on both sides people act the same way and talk the same way even though, or because, they are more and more hostile to each other.